Lean and Mean

[DGShannon_imp]

Always felt the FI was spot on when my bike was stock. Never felt any hesitation or the feeling the back was holding back. However, every bike has its own character within the same model and can be tweaked with a PC5 and a good tuner.

Below 3,000 rpm, mine is just amazing. So smooth, great torque. Makes me feel for others here on the forum reporting problems with theirs. However, once I cross 3,200, on up to 4,000, there is a character change. Never stumbles, feels rough, etc. as if FI was off, but it just becomes strained feeling. Almost choked down. Looking at the PCV map, elsewhere in the forum, I see that the greatest correction numbers appear right in the rpm range where I sense this. Gives me some confidence that all I am feeling is the FI shifting into a too lean state. If further break-in doesn't change things (engine loosens up a bit more) I will certainly try a Power Commander. I was hoping someone else may have already experienced the same, and could say for certain that doing so would resolve the problem.

Installed the Power Commander V on Friday, with the bike showing 285 miles on the odometer. Headed out for a 300 mile ride on Saturday. Most happy to report that the "strained" or "choked down" feeling is completely gone! When you look at the out of the box PCV map, and where it's values richen up the mixture, it seems that what I was feeling was the slight lean condition imposed upon the bike by Honda having to meet EPA requirements.



Since the bike was so incredibly smooth otherwise, I was deeply concerned that installing the PCV might have some adverse consequences. Seems most apparent that DynoJet did their homework as all you get from installing this unit is improvement.

While riding it post installation, I finally figured out how to verbalize what I was feeling. Before install, I would get the bike running along at 65, and then take my eyes off the gauges. Continue along just sensing the bike, hearing and feeling the engine as it speaks to you. Check the gauges a few miles down the road, and low and behold your right wrist compensator had let the speed drop back to 55 mph. The engine was subtly communicating that it just wasn't happy at the higher speed. Do the same now, with the PCV installed, and when I look back at the gauges again, I would still be at 65, if not 70!

Other threads have questioned why we spend money on performance mods, for these bikes, since that is not really what they are about, and just buying a (often cheaper) prepackaged plastic covered rocket straight off the showroom floor is money better spent. In this case, I wasn't looking for more speed, horsepower, torque, noise, etc. but instead was hoping for a bike that performed a little closer to what the Honda Engineers would have like to have given us before the EPA got in their way. In the case of the PCV, I think it fulfills that task very well, on our bikes.